Am I? Am I? Yes I am present. How do I know that? Because I am breathing, I can feel my breath. Have you tried that? It is the best way to reel you back into the present while you are busy wondering why the past was the way it was or worrying about the future. Did you know that your mission in life is to live as many experiences as possible? Did you know that a long life is not by the number of days but the number of experiences? Doesn’t that sound like a cliche’ you have heard before? Did you know that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional? Just like from great freedom comes great responsibility, from great pain comes great growth. Sounds corny doesn’t it? Yeah but true nonetheless.

Maybe it has something to do with the time of year but I feel like I am at my annual performance review with life: taking stock of where I have been, what I have accomplished, what have I learnt and where do I want to go. Its a good thing. Keeps you on track of where you are in life and checks to see if you have gone off course. Most people complain about not having enough time. I think I have enough of it, its a matter of perspective. Most people want to win the lottery, for me, money is a by product, a means to an end. Life has a strange way of forcing you to face the truth. Lessons that are not learnt the first time keep coming back until you figure it out. The signs are all over the place.

But one has to learn to look and listen and not question. I forget that everyone is in a different stage in life. I forget that age has nothing to do with wisdom. Sometimes the most profound statements come from the mouth of babes. I forget that doing things because of ego only causes pain and heartache. I forget that letting go is truly allowing you to be free of pain. A wise friend told me that sacrifice is forced and letting go is voluntary.

While I start to recall all the things I have forgotten, I also remember to breathe. I am most definitely here and I am in the present. Are you?

It took me while to figure out what it was. Why that sense of restlessness, like something is incomplete or not been accomplished. Like I forgot something, the mind jumping from thought to thought like a drunken monkey. The feeling of desolation and despair – how can one feel like that even when you have everything?

Nothing seems important. Even though you are doing stuff your mind is on other things or you think it is on other things – you cannot focus. You try to find meaning in things and try and figure out why you do the things you do. People ask you to slow down yet you feel like you are not going fast enough. You are at a different pace from rest of the world yet your brain and hands cannot keep up with each other. Is this what love is? Is this how it makes you feel? Listless. Incomplete.

It was all those thoughts and words in my head that was creating a traffic jam. Simple ideas had to be pushed out before it got lost in the jumble. Probably explains the burst of talking. When you get the message in different forms – there must be some truth to it. And then fingers hit the keys and the words began to flow and the traffic jam in my head started to clear.

If you have not already figured it out – it was the writing. That was what was creating the sluggish existence. And now it all makes sense and the thinking is clearer. The pace is just right, you figured out what needs to be done. The cobwebs in your mind have been cleaned out and there is some semblance of order. O! How I have missed the writing. I am so glad to be back.

Picture this – you are old enough to drive a car, and to shop on your own but you don’t know how to go home - because you don’t have a GPS. You did wrote down the directionsbut you can’t read your own handwriting. You had to go somewhere else but you don’t know how to get there and you don’t have any written directions for that one either. And here I thought that the moment you turn 18 you have everything figured out. In the eyes of most people you are an adult, right? Wrong!!! Let me tell ya – it does not matter how old you are – learning how to do things comes from observation and practise. You have 10 year olds who are more organized than 35 year olds who are gainfully employed and have kids, a car and a house.

So what is the key ot no stress? Organization, of course. And Iwas the queen of organized chaos – had piles of everything everywhere – but I knew where everything was. But that definitely did not help when other people needed to find it. So what made me change my mind? When I realized that I was dispensable and your reputation depended on how quickly other people can understand what you were trying to accomplish. Signs of a genius is in being able to explain the most complex of concepts in an extremely easy way so that anyone can understand it. You don’t have to be a genius to be organized but that’s for another post.

The secret is not just in being organized and being able to find your stuff,but also being able to use that stuff to solve problems in the quickest possible time forany situation that may come up or anticipate how another person would react and cater for it accordingly. So how does one learn to do that? Pay attention. Look around you. See how other people get things done (there is actually a workshop on Get Things Done). And you might get it wrong a couple times and then you learn.

But then there are some who never get it. And you wonder why people have so much stress in their lives.

No matter how cliched it sounds do you know there is a section called Letting Go during parent orientation? Needless to say there is a requirement for it. I was surprised to see how many parents had a hard time with that. Now there is a difference between letting go and being upset about your child moving away. The latter happens whether you like it or not, the former is something most people struggle with.

This is a precursor to becoming an adult. Technically they are adults when they are 18 but there is no rule that says that they are going to behave like one. That depends on what they are used to and the kinds of experiences they have had and scenarios that they are exposed to, but I digress. Learning to make wise choices whether it be about friends, money or classes is something they will have to learn to do.

So have I let go? Yes I think so. I am in no hurry to do any of the 5 million things they have to do to make sure their classes and extra curricular are in order. I have taught them to do laundry and cook – at least the food they like – so they will not starve, they know they have to say please and thank you, be courteous to elders and help those in need. they know I will not be waking them up in the morning cause they have their own alarm clock and don’t spend if you cannot afford it – half of America’s problems are because of people living beyond their means.

But am I upset that my eldest is going off to college? Yes, I know so. Its definitely going to be different. The house will be quieter, there will be less times that I will be waiting up, the room will remain clean and I won’t have to wait for a while before I get hot water and the kitchen will be clean. But I am going to miss the loud music, discussions on the different experiences and lives of how other people think, arguments over silly things, the joint cooking sessions, critical fashion advice and all the other multitude of happenings in the universe that I am not exposed to.

But I have a feeling that things are going to be interesting from now on. It is painful to watch while they struggle on issues and you cannot help them, but it is refreshing to see how they take what they have learned and grow and become these adults with fascinating personalities and a mission to make a mark in the world.